Is Choosing Education a Failure?

In today’s Nigeria, saying you want to study education is almost an admission of failure. It’s no longer a noble pursuit, but a fallback for those who "couldn’t get something better." Admission trends at universities tell the story - education courses have become some of the least competitive, and even among those enrolled, a troubling majority landed there by accident not choice.


This is a reflection of a deeper rot in our national values. A society that sees no honour in training teachers is a society that has written off its own future. Yet we pretend to be surprised when public schools crumble and the next generation flounders. The truth is, we’ve devalued education at its roots by neglecting the very people who make it happen.


Just this morning, I came across a Facebook thread where friends were discussing the risks of building a life in Nigeria’s public universities. One remarked that if you choose to teach in a Nigerian university, you must first secure your own oxygen mask, because no one is coming to save you. Another added that we must save ourselves before attempting to save the world.


The commentary struck me. It was painful, but it wasn’t new. Most of us in academia have internalised this quiet resignation. We no longer speak of reforms or movements; we speak of escape plans. We’ve stopped imagining a better university system and started crafting survival strategies. The shift is subtle, but the implications are seismic.


The danger of this collective despair is best captured by the analogy of a sinking ship. Instead of coming together to patch the holes, every passenger is now sawing off a plank to build their own canoe. It seems practical, rational, even, but what happens when everyone is off the ship? We forget that no one survives long in an ocean alone.


This self-preservation instinct is understandable, especially when the system punishes excellence and rewards mediocrity. But it is also short-sighted. Nigeria’s educational decay won’t be solved by individual escape; it requires systemic courage. And that courage has to begin with reclaiming the dignity of education and of educators.


We must ask ourselves uncomfortable questions: Why are the best students avoiding education degrees? Why do those who teach at our universities need side hustles to survive? Why are lecturers who should be national assets becoming national afterthoughts? If we fail to confront these questions, we will continue spiraling.


This is not an ideological rant, before someone accuses me of being socialist, it is a national emergency. Countries that have progressed in the last century, Finland, South Korea, Singapore, did not do so by abandoning their teachers. They made them the centrepiece of national development. Here, we’ve done the opposite. We’ve turned education into a graveyard for unfulfilled dreams.


But it doesn’t have to stay this way. Rebuilding starts with a shift in mindset. We must restore honour to teaching as soon as we can, not through slogans, but through deliberate restructuring - decent salaries, professional respect, funding for research, and career pathways that reward merit. We must stop treating education as a burden and start treating it as the bridge to every other sector.


Until we do that, we remain the nation cutting up its own lifeboat, hoping to drift to safety. It won’t work. And when the waters rise, we’ll all find out, some too late, that abandoning education was never an escape. It was a national suicide note.

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